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When most gamers think of visual novels, the first kind of game that comes into their minds is typically dating simulators. They are not for everyone, as many say they are full of overused anime tropes and predictable stories. Contrary to what gamers may first imagine, though, there are visual novels that are diamonds in the rough. One such title is Raging Loop, a visual novel that is a horror-thriller and did not oversaturate itself with anime harem cliches.
Raging Loop came out in 2015, and on Steam in 2017, and has remained in obscurity despite its overwhelmingly positive reviews by players. With time loop games like Deathloop and dark stories like Squid Game being popular today, it is definitely worth discussing this hidden gem, as it is also comparable to Danganronpa, When they Cry, and the Zero Escape series.
Raging Loop: A Story Built Upon The Werewolf Game
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The choose-your-own-adventure and story portion of Raging Loop is easy to understand for gamers that have played the werewolf (also known as mafia) party game. The social deduction party game was invented in the 80s, having a group of players make up a village where a sort of "god" player assigns secret roles to each villager. One would be a werewolf who gets to kill one villager every night. Then, everyone votes on who to hang and hopes they get the werewolf, if not, the game continues and the werewolf wins when the village is wiped out.
Raging Loop is that basic party game, but with a ton of twists, a time-loop, branching narrative, actual death, and a lot of folklore. The protagonist, Haruaki, is an outsider who happens upon a rural village that is cursed with this werewolf event. The whole village is on lockdown as they try to figure out who the werewolf is before they are all killed. Just like the party game, though, the werewolf can only kill one person a night, and the villagers can only hang one person a day.
What The Game Does Right
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The time-loop mechanic of the game is really the star of the show, as Haruaki learns important information with every death and can go back to a certain point where he can unlock a new branch in the story. There are a lot of bad endings, but the player is encouraged to get them in order to pave the way towards the true ending. This also makes the game much longer than typical visual novels, which is good since this is the sort of story that keeps players at the edge of their seats until the end.
Secondly, the characters are well-written and diverse. Visual novels too often fall into the male protagonist with a harem of young women, and Raging Loop steps far away from that with the village being filled with other men, elders, mothers, and children of all varied ages. The protagonist himself is also a breath of fresh air in the visual novel genre, being a mature 24-year-old instead of a naive teenager. Of course, for fans who like a little romantic tension, there are two women near Haruaki's age in the village as well.
Lastly, despite its long length, the game continuously deals out well-done twists. This is mostly due to the time-looping and branching storyline. The characters keep revealing new things about themselves as Haruaki witnesses them in different roles. The werewolf's identity changes every loop, and that keeps the player on their toes and encourages them to get to know all the characters to see any slight change in their behavior. After all, werewolf is a social deduction game, and different werewolves will have different strategies to tear the village apart.
In terms of what the game did not do right, most agree that the story bit off more than it could chew, which resulted in a messy ending. However, many found the ending to be, while not clean, satisfying enough to say the game is still very good. Raging Loop actually has good replayability as well, as a new game plus adds a lot of extra dialogue and scenes.
How The Game Is Stuck In Obscurity
The disparity between the reviews of critics and the reviews of Steam players is big, with Nintendo Life scoring the game with a devasting five out of 10 while Steam reviewers gave Raging Loop many thumbs up while begging others to play it in the comments. The number of player reviews is at about two thousand, which is a small number compared to comparable games like Deathloop and Danganronpa.
The reasons behind Raging Loop's undeserved obscurity are not hard to imagine. The games' publisher and developer is Kemco, which has not made widely-known titles. Then, of course, Raging Loop is a visual novel, and those are not very popular outside of Japan since most gamers desire more action and less reading. The game also has no anime adaptation, which is often what puts visual novels stories out there on the international lens like with When they Cry.
Years have passed since release, and most fans of Raging Loop picked up the game due to word-of-mouth or research with a stroke of luck. While fans wish they had more people to talk to about the game, sometimes it is the obscurity that makes a game a little more special. Perhaps Kemco can strike gold twice and make another great game, and then more gamers can know of and enjoy Raging Loop.
Raging Loop is available on iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch, PC, PS Vita, and PS4.